Toujours
by EmitRemmus
Summary: After the events in the Shrieking Shack, Sirius is hiding in his childhood home. It's not so bad, as his old lover Remus is there to keep him company. Marauders make their own entertainment! Spread the love- R&R!
1. Late July 1994

**Late July 1994. A Reunion. Home Sweet Home.**

Sirius stands on the doorstep, his nose almost touching the crusty old door. The huge, scaled doorknob is _right there_ by his hand – he jerks away, and scratches his matted overgrowth of beard and hair.

He turns to look behind him at Dumbledore, lit by streetlights, resplendent as ever in silver-grey robes that match his sweeping beard. Match precisely, in fact. The beard trimmed and layered with professional flair. It's tied near the bottom with a silver string bow.

A _tasselled_ silver string bow.

Sometimes Sirius wonders about Dumbledore.

The old man inclines his graceful head, a gesture, _go on, Sirius._

_Don't be a pussy, Sirius._

So Sirius inhales, turning back to the door, puffing out his chest and tossing his head, bravado, _that's me_, _a man, who can face this_.

But the faces of his parents, coldly indifferent, swim up behind his eyes. His neck feels hot and itches, as though he were back in a shirt from his childhood, buttoned tight up to his chin. Rage blossoms like a gas fire inside him, his jaw tightens and he aches to take a swing at something, at one of those cold faces.

He has not stood here for seventeen years. Has not felt like this since he was sixteen, tearing down the hangings in his bedroom, kicking walls, shaking hands lighting bits of paper on the windowsill. Watching his mother curse a thread stream of fire at the Black family tree, scorching away his face and name, removing all connection to his family, destroying the ties that bound them together.

He hates them all, pureblood cunts, but somewhere inside, that still hurts.

Moony would be brave about this. Moony is coming soon.

'_Alohomora.'_

Sirius turns the snaky doorknob. The door protests loudly as he gingerly pushes it open. The hall within is dark, and smelly. Very smelly.

_How long was the old witch in here before they found her?_

He steps inside. Hears a _crack _as Dumbledore Disapparates.

_I don't want to do this alone._

Ancient gas lamps automatically ignite. As he takes another step, trying futilely to somehow not let his feet touch the carpet, the old door creaks and clicks shut behind him, making him jump and yank his wand from his belt. He screws up his face as the smell, must, mould, putrid food, damp, dead mice, dead fuck knows what else, swirls around him along with a good lot of dust.

Home sweet home.

* * *

><p>Remus looks behind him at the beloved castle, its windows lit, its silhouette highlighted by the setting sun behind it. An evening chill is creeping in with mist around his ankles, and Remus pulls his old cloak tighter around himself, considering for a moment the hairs on the back of his hand that weren't there when he was younger.<p>

There is the astronomy tower where they sneaked on James's sixteenth birthday and smoked up under the stars. There is the Gryffindor tower, where he was included, accepted, liked, for the first time in his life. Where he found the best friends anyone could ever dream of. There are the rooms in which he made decisions that shaped the rest of his life. Where the teenage Remus Lupin had all his firsts, and a thousand adventures besides. There is Hogwarts, in all its beauty, its strange, sumptuous, velvet, stony majesty, its magic and its glory.

Remus knows, somehow, that he'll be back one day. Truly, who Remus Lupin is was born here. Perhaps he'll die here too. Fighting beside Sirius to defend it.

He breathes it in, one last time, the faint whiff of dinner through the windows, the mystery of the Forest, the smell of adolescent dreams, the candle wax softly melting above the shifting staircases, the castle breathing.

Then he turns and walks through the iron gates to where a carriage is waiting.

Remus has a date to keep.

'Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, please.' he says to the Thestral, and climbs in with his small, shabby suitcase.

* * *

><p>Sirius advances into the hallway, his wand in his hand. The stuffed elf heads mounted on the walls have not improved in appearance. The wallpaper is discoloured, bulging in places where some horrible thing has made its nest, and hanging in strips in others.<p>

A couple of small skeletons are strewn across the floor.

Sirius enters the first room on his right. Again with the gas lamps. Again with the dust. It's the drawing room where nobody ever used to draw. There is something dark and hairy in the chandelier, Sirius doesn't know what and doesn't want to look too closely. It might shit on him. Or eat him. Or both.

The next door screams when he touches it and the doorknob tries to bite him. The sound is piercing in the hushed silence of a dead house.

'Damned melodramatic pureblood wankers.' Sirius mutters to himself, sucking his nipped fingers.

'_You?_' hisses a voice behind him.

Sirius whips around at his mother's voice, expecting to see her there, in a dark dress as always, pinched white lips that spew thin trails of saliva with every fricative. Behind him is a large painting, gold framed, intricate. For a moment nothing moves in its shadowy depths. Then a face rises from under black hair, white fingers uncurl from the darkness that Sirius sees now is an arm, a torso, a woman, shrunken into her painted backdrop, camouflaged by years of solitude and dust, dust, dust.

'Hello, Mum.'

'_Sirius?_'

'Yes, Mother, it's me.' Sirius grins at her, knowing he looks mad, 'I've changed a little, haven't I? Spent twelve years in Azkaban. Not one word from you, I might add. Last time I saw you, you used the Cruciatus Curse on me and locked me out of the house. Last time I saw you, you were a little more… three-dimensional?'

'_Get…out…' _Mrs. Black's fury is such that she is almost incapable of forming words, it seems. 'Get OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU WRETCHED CHILD!' Her yellow teeth are bared, corseted chest heaving. The Blacks were always a kinky bunch.

'Not your house anymore,' Sirius breathes, stepping closer, face to face with his vanquished demon. 'Not since pansy old Regulus went and got himself killed.'

'HOW DARE YOU BESMIRCH-'

'I DO DARE,' Sirius yells suddenly in her scrunchy little face, 'I DO DARE, MUM. ALL those FUCKING YEARS, and I'm FREE now to do what I FUCKING WELL WANT TO!' And he kicks the wall below his mother's portrait, making the frame swing slightly.

'YOU FILTH-TONGUED, UNWORTHY-'

Sirius spits in her face. The old witch screeches, tries to wipe it away, but it merely slides insolently down her dress, a trail through the dust.

'That's right,' He hisses, 'you're just a painting, a painting of an evil old hag. And I'll do what I want.'

He raises his wand and points it between her blackcurrant eyes. The rage doesn't fade from her face, but she twists into a smile, and cackles at him. She looks quite deranged.

'Did you think I never knew you would return, boy?' She grinds at him between spitty chuckles. 'Do you think your mother is as STUPID as a filthy MUGGLE? Just you TRY and burn me, TRY and get rid of me, you PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A SON OF THE NOBLE HOUSE OF-'

'_INCENDIO_!' Flames erupt from Sirius's wand-tip, scorching blue and white, engulfing the portrait of his mother and the surrounding wall space. They blaze and crackle, and Sirius laughs triumphantly into the inferno, but his mother laughs back, shill and evil. He extinguishes the flames, and there she is, pristine, rocking back and forth with the force of her mirth.

'You'll never get rid of me, boy,' she wheezes, 'the ancient and most noble blood of my forefathers protects me…'

Sirius grabs the golden frame, shining against the blackened and burned wall surrounding it. He heaves backwards, thinking to lift it from its hook, and a blast of smoky black magic burns his hands and expels him several feet away.

'Oof!' Several feet is enough, as Sirius's back collides with the opposite wall. He crumples to the ground as his mother subsides into wicked fits of glee. He scrambles up, coughing from the impact.

'Fuck you, Mother. _Silencio._'

His mother still rolls around in her chair, but her voice has been disabled. She realizes what Sirius has done, and opens her mouth wide, silently screaming, until she runs out of breath and clenches her teeth, narrow-eyed and steaming pudding-pink.

'That's better, don't you think?' Mrs Black simply glares. 'Oh and by the way, Mum, my long-term homosexual werewolf lover will be coming to live with us this evening. I want you to keep your bigoted mouth shut. Oh wait, you don't have a goddamn _choice_.' His mother's eyes pop wide, and her jaw drops to rest on her black-frilled collar. 'That's right Mum. My HOMOSEXUAL WEREWOLF LOVER. I am a GAY MAN. Or, at least,' Sirius corrects himself, 'I like werewolf cock up my arse.' Mrs Black appears to suck in all her breath and draw herself up, bosom trembling, before resuming her silent screams.

Sirius laughs bitterly. 'I'm getting something to hang over you ASAP. Don't want to look at your ugly old face every day.'

He proceeds to the kitchen at the far end of the long, narrow hall with triumph in his heart, footsteps raising dust clouds.

Sirius stops in his tracks. The kitchen door is ajar. A noise, a voice, muttering.

_Who the hell is that? _Sirius extinguishes the lamps with his wand and backs against a wall. Pointless really, he realizes, whatever it is would have heard that damned door scream. Not to mention his stupid mother. He readies himself, shifts and takes aim with his wand at the door as it slowly _creeeaaaks _inward…

'…Sandalwood polish for my mistress, how she will shine, my poor mistress…'

The door opens. Sirius's jaw drops, and so does his wand.

'_Kreacher?'_

There stands an ancient house elf, skin hanging from his thin frame, draped in a filthy old pillowcase, a cloth and a bottle in his hands. Sirius had forgotten about his inherited elf, or just assumed that, Kreacher already being at least eighty when Sirius left home, the Blacks would have beheaded him soon after, in keeping with family tradition. Apparently, (_unfortunately, _Sirius thinks, surveying the cretinous thing before him) Kreacher is hardier than the rest.

'Well, well, Kreacher,' says Sirius with a twisted grin, 'How've you been keeping?'

The elf seems unable to see Sirius, or perhaps unable to believe he is real. He drops what he's carrying, rubs his eyes with veiny old hands, and looks again. Finally, he shakes his head, batty ears flapping, apparently sure he is hallucinating.

'Kreacher thought he heard a voice, Kreacher must be dreaming,' he croaks, 'who is that, standing there, it can't be Master Sirius, ungrateful little wretch I did always say he was, oh what would my poor mistress say…' And he picks up the cloth and the bottle and shuffles down the hall, past Sirius, chuntering all the way in his crackly baritone.

It feels like a betrayal. This last remnant of Sirius's childhood, however unpleasant, does not believe in his existence.

The kitchen is inches deep in dust. Sirius decides not to open any cupboards until he has backup. But where the hell is he going to sleep tonight? _You have a bedroom upstairs_, he reminds himself, _a bedroom where you were never comfortable or felt at home. A bedroom you used to set on fire on a pretty regular basis. And a bed where you never daydreamed, or had sex, or lay in til noon, just enjoying life._

Sirius can't face the upstairs today.

_There'll be time for all that later._

The next room he investigates is the sitting room, where nobody ever used to sit. Except his mother, occasionally, in the window seat to read. Like the rest, it's filthy, smelly, and dusty. But there is, at least, nothing dark and hairy roosting in the chandelier. There isn't even a chandelier. But there's a _fireplace. _And a chaise-longue in front of it.

'Yes.' Says Sirius to the fire and the couch.

He drops his little bag and goes in search of the downstairs bathroom.

* * *

><p>Remus starts awake when the carriage wheels hit the ground. The Thestral snorts to announce their arrival. Yawning, Remus fumbles for the door handle and steps onto the pavement.<p>

'Thankyou.' He gives the bony winged horse a quick pat. It snorts again and he moves away as it unfurls great black wings, rears up and launches itself skyward.

Remus's hair blows in the Thestral's departing breeze. He looks up at the grim grey buildings. Now for the tricky bit.

He steps forward, pulling out his wand, and, feeling a little self-conscious, taps the twisty iron railing that divides the doorsteps of Numbers Eleven and Thirteen.

Nothing happens.

Remus sighs.

Why does this sort of thing never seem to work for him? When wizards are supposed to just _make things happen_, without learning a spell and a complicated little wand motion and practising for hours, when things _just happen, _just _because he is a wizard, _this is when Remus falls down in epic proportions.

He taps again, and again, and finally just beats the cold metal with his wand, staccato _ting ting ting_, that fails, multiple times, to make anything happen.

He purses his lips, looking up at the divide between the houses. Sirius is in there somewhere, squirreled away with some tremendously brilliant, grinding magic. Sirius is in there waiting. _Remus Lupin you are getting in this building. For God's sake use the balls you have managed to grow against all odds. Just DO IT, man._

He squares his shoulders and taps the railing again, sharply, with presumption and confidence.

'Hello,' he says to the bricks, 'My name is Remus Lupin,'

The bricks are silent.

'I may not look it, but I am in fact a wizard, goddamnit!' And he taps the metal again.

The bricks shift slightly.

'So if you would just let me in smartish, if you please…_Now._' Tap tap, _tap._

The wall hesitates for a moment. Then it begins to slide apart, with a great deal of rock dust, rattling and shuddering. Remus blinks bits of roofing tile out of his eyes as Number Twelve comes into view.

'_Thank_you!'

Remus closes his hand on the huge silver doorknocker. It's a snake's head. Cold in the night air and bloody heavy. He lifts and drops it twice, hearing it echo inside the house.

* * *

><p>A little while ago, Sirius had found the downstairs bathroom. Washing with hot water had felt better than anything he'd known in the last twelve years. There was even some soap in the bag Dumbledore had given him.<p>

After that, he'd hacked off the growth of filthy matted hair and beard. His face was still skeletal, his eyes still shadowed and full of the horror of Azkaban. But he'd found something of his twenty-one-year-old self in the strange man's face in the mirror. He still wore the earring he'd had since he was fifteen. His eyes were still dark and seductive, and his smile was the cheeky grin from so many photographs.

Sirius has siphoned the dust off the chaise-longue, and is just about to light the fire when someone knocks, twice, on the door. It vibrates through the hall, through Sirius's ears and straight down into his stomach where it churns pleasantly.

'Moony!' He says aloud, and the name brings a smile to his face.

He jumps to his feet and is on the point of running to the door, but catches sight of his reflection in the rust-flecked mirror over the mantel. Sirius shakes out his hair over one eye, winks roguishly at his reflection, and goes for the door again.

'Wait,' he says, and points his wand at the fireplace, '_Incendio_!' A cheery fire crackles welcomingly in the grate. It's the best that Sirius can do.

* * *

><p>Footsteps sound behind the door. Remus's heart speeds up. He quickly combs his hand through his hair and is glad he did, for some dust and bits of brick fall out. He bites his lip and tries to stop himself from bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet.<p>

* * *

><p>Sirius fumbles with the locks, hands trembling, and yanks open the door, eyes burning, ready to drink in Moony, light hair messy, probably, tired-looking, perhaps wool-clad, and beautiful.<p>

* * *

><p>'Hello.' Sirius says huskily, his eyes bright, teeth flashing, a single tear sparkling from his eye. Remus feels blinded. He has no idea what his face is doing. In all probability, he looks like a fish.<p>

* * *

><p>'Hello.' Sirius says, and he feels his voice break, and he blinks, and for no reason at all, or maybe all the reason in the world, a tear falls down his cheek and drops onto Remus's shoe.<p>

* * *

><p>Sirius's teardrop splashes onto Remus's shoe.<p>

Sirius is twenty-one again. He's thinner, but that is all. An earring sparkles under his rough-cut, tousled, slightly wet hair. His shirt and trousers are dark, but clean. His feet are bare. The beard is gone.

'You shaved,' blurts Remus, 'Shame really because well, I know there was no time for any of this is the Shack but I had started to like it. The beard, I m-'

And then they are kissing like Remus can't ever remember kissing before, and Sirius smells of dog and soap and warmth as he pulls Remus inside, lips chapped but sweet, hands at his face, hands in his hair, hands inside his shirt, Sirius's wet cheek and the feel of his ribs sliding beneath his skin, noises, friction heat, and a thumb smoothes the scars across Remus's chest as they pause for a moment, noses and foreheads pressed together, eyelashes tickling, against the door and a bolt digging into his back.

Sirius's lips drag the skin beneath Remus's eye, Remus breathing in Sirius's neck, never wanting to stop _touching_ him, and he bites an earlobe, licks it, hears a little noise in Sirius's throat.

'Pardon?' He says between kisses.

'Twelve _bloody, fucking _years, do you have any idea,' Sirius says, aloud and breathless into Remus's hair.

'I have some,' Remus assures him, 'I have some but the question is, the question is do you have a soft surface I may throw you across?'

Sirius coughs out a laugh into the dark hall.

Remus pauses. 'It doesn't even have to be a soft surface, it could be hard surface or a fizzy-'

'Right this way.' And Sirius leads, feeling for the doorway behind him with a vague hand, tumbling in, bumping into the couch, their teeth hit together, and it's all so, Remus thinks, it's all so incredibly, it's something that he can't place his finger on just now because all ten of them are rather busy somewhere else...


	2. Flashback to 1973

**A nightmare flashback to a night in 1973. A night like many others.**

_The grandfather clock ticks downstairs. Remus can hear it, even through the thick stone floor. To him, the faint, regular sounds are an audible echo up the spiral staircase that leads from the Gryffindor common room to the dormitory in which he now sits, cold and sleepless, in his bed. _

_He has taken down the hangings around his four-poster. Through the window he faces, Remus can see the moon, bright in its waxing gibbous glory. To those not as acutely sensitive to the lunar phases as Remus Lupin, it is almost a perfect orb. Remus Lupin has known the phases of the moon intimately since he barely knew anything, except the pain that it causes him, pain greater than anything else in his young life, and with the pain the once-monthly loss of memory, of mind, of self. _

_The moonlight is a chill on his shoulders. His body feels heavy and made of ice. His palms itch madly, and his thin arms are wrapped around his stomach, trying to pressure away the ache inside. His breath comes slowly, and when he exhales, surprises his numb lips with its warmth._

_Remus knows he has not blinked for hours. If he does, or even looks away for a moment, there is always a possibility that the moon, which hangs now so unchanging and innocent in the night sky, will suddenly alter and become full, as it does in his nightmares, and he will feel the ache in his bones worsen to a flashing pain, and he will stretch and snarl involuntarily as the itching spreads over his skin, and his vision will change as his eyes become yellow with slit pupils. Then, Remus knows, he will feel fangs sprouting in his lengthening jaw, as his slight build mutates into that of a hunched, elongated creature with a mind that is not Remus's, and claws that want to gouge the flesh in bloody furrows on his friends backs and see the glistening whites of Sirius's dark eyes as he screams-__  
><em>

'NO!'

Remus jerks upright.

Sirius is breathing softly beside him, dark hair spread over his face and the pillow, buried in doggy dreams that Remus cannot penetrate. His hand lies by Remus's thigh, as though, a moment ago, Remus was holding it. He rolls down by Sirius again, noses close, and runs his scarred right hand over Sirius's smooth shoulder, inhaling his unconscious peace. His tense muscles slowly relax in the warmth of Sirius's bedroom, and he feels himself slipping away…

_Remus does not move. As the grandfather clock ticks through the night, so he stares down the moon, measuring out the beats of his heart, his arms tight around his body, feeling cold skin on skin to reassure himself that it is still his._


	3. August 1994

**August 1994. Venturing upstairs, a razor cut, a murderous mist, and an angry House. An amendment to the rules.**

Remus lathers carefully. This is part of being a man he truly enjoys. The responsibility of pruning his cheeks and chin. Keeping things _neat. _

He picks up his razor from the special bowl and surveys himself, hesitant brown eyes and light, untidy hair. He lifts his hand to make the first stroke.

'MOOOONYYYYY!'

Remus jumps, the razor slips against his lip and cuts him, a jagged cut from his lip to the crease of his chin. He gasps and drops the razor, blood dripping into the sink.

'MOOOOONYYYYY!'

'God damn you, Sirius Black.' Murmurs Remus, pressing a flannel to the place and wincing. His blood in the sink swirls prettily, mingling patterns in the water. Remus's chin hurts horribly.

'REMUS FUCKING LUUUUPIN!'

Then come a series of crashing bangs and a war cry from Sirius, and Remus realizes the sounds are coming from _above_ him, which means that Sirius has rampantly ignored Remus's ministrations and ventured into the Upstairs.

Upstairs is far more dangerous than down, so dangerous in fact that Remus has had to cast an Imperturbablecharm on the bottom stair to keep he and Sirius safe from its dusty, Dark inhabitants. The charm came about after Sirius sustained a nasty wound to the ankle from an old pair of compasses on the landing, the first time they dared to climb the stairs. The compasses then chased them down the upstairs hallway, skittering along on two sharp points like an unpleasant silver insect and avoiding every curse fired at it, and all the way down the stairs before Remus could crush it with a paperweight.

Unfortunately, the House of Black has a tendency to destroy things it doesn't like. As Remus pounds down the hallway to the foot of the stairs, he notices a strange, pearly-grey mist coating the carpet. It swirls up behind his feet as he skids to a halt, and Remus clamps his sleeve over his nose and mouth.

Rule One for the occupants of Number 12: do not inhale, swallow or otherwise ingest any substance of Black origin that has not been subjected to rigorous testing.

The strange mist is flowing down the stairs in gently undulating waves. Remus puts out his hand to where the barrier should be, and is not repelled. It seems that the mist has dissolved his charm. So that's how Sirius got upstairs.

'Sirius?' Remus calls up into the gloom.

There is no answer. Remus is not worried. He is not particularly emotional about anything. In fact, he has only just realized how very…very…tired he is… Not to mention how pretty the pearly mist is…swirly, and…why shouldn't he just have a little nap…how nice that would be… Remus yawns, and blinks rapidly. 'Bugger!' He clamps his sleeve back over his face and the drowsiness disappears. The mist spirals ominously in front of him.

'SIRIUS!' Now Remus is very worried. He takes a deep breath through the fabric of his sleeve, and charges up the stairs, through the thickening mist. Almost immediately his legs go numb, but Remus ploughs on. As he reaches the landing, the gas lamps fail to ignite. '_Lumos_!'

But now the mist is so thick that the light from his wand hardly penetrates it. He feels his skin losing it's feeling, the mist saps his nerve endings until nothing makes an impact. Coughing now, Remus enters a room, just as Sirius attempts to leave it. They fall, retching, to the carpet where the mist is deepest, and Remus can't feel himself, even as they fall down the stairs, thud, thud, thud, he feels nothing until they roll out of the mist into a clearer spot by the doorstep.

There are dead mice all around them, half-visible through the light layer of glimmering fog. _That's odd_, Remus thinks vaguely through the sleepiness.

Then the feeling comes back to Remus's limbs, and it's shocking, because he's fairly sure he's broken a couple of toes, and the rest of him is all bruises, and Sirius is choking under him. Remus slides painfully off, and sees that Sirius is being strangled by a piece of material. He grabs for his wand in his belt, but it is not there. He must have dropped it.

'_Arrghh_…' Sirius is turning slightly blue. Remus spies Sirius's mahogany wand (only the best for the Black offspring) and lunges for it.

'_Diffindo_!' The material tears away, and Remus can see that it is a pair of trousers.

'Holy fuck,' Sirius says heavily, rubbing his neck.

'I _told_ you,' Remus gasps. He tosses Sirius the wand.

'Never mind that now.' Sirius hisses. He clambers up and yanks Remus to his feet, both backing against the door. The mist is still flowing, spreading out around the clear spot by their feet, rising up like a roiling wall. This attack isn't a random infestation of fog, Remus realizes, it's an extermination. The mist acts as an anaesthetic, putting you to sleep and then poisoning you from within.

'Sirius,' Remus says through pain-clenched teeth, '_do something_.'

'Fucking _what_ am I supposed to do?'

'Sirius-'

'_Expulso_!_' _The mist flutters.

'It's not solid, Sirius!'

'Alright! Alright! Ahh! _Crucio_!'

'Sirius-'

'Shit! _Impedimenta_!'

'Sirius-'

'_Incendio_!' Blue flames erupt from Sirius's wand tip, filling the space in front of them. The mist ignites with a whooshing sound, like gas, and the fire rushes through the hallway and up the stairs, and, in less than three seconds, the mist is gone.

But before either of them even exhales, there is a rumbling in the walls. The floor begins to vibrate strongly beneath their feet, setting Remus's jaw chattering. Sirius clasps Remus's hand, and they back further up against the door.

Then the chains that hang on the front door loop swiftly around their arms and yank them off the floor, tight against the buzzing wood. Sirius yells and kicks before Remus realizes what has happened, and doormat rolls up and curls determinedly around their feet.

And then a voice says,

'_WHO DAAAARES TO BURN MY DISINFECTANT LEGIONS?_'

The voice is crumbly, rumbling and baritonal, and issues from all around them, from the creaking floor and the resonating walls and the whispering ceiling. Mrs Black's curtains fly open at the massive noise.

'SONS OF MUGGLES AND SQUIBS, STAINS OF DISGRACE-'

'_SILENCE, WALBURGA._'

Mrs Black shrinks back, dark little eyes suddenly wide with worshipful awe.

'Yes, House, of course. I do beg your pardon, O Noble House of my-'

'_I SAID SILENCE!_' Sirius's mother trembles, and her curtains slam shut. '_NOW, WHO DAAAARES TO DESTROY MY ANCIENT SPELL OF CLEANSING?_'

Remus turns his head and stares helplessly at Sirius, shaking beside him.

'_What the fucking Christ is that_?' Sirius hisses, but snaps his head back to the front as the voice booms again.

'_I HAVE YOU IN MY GRASP, WRIGGLING HUMANS, AND I AM NOT A PATIENT HOUSE. NOW, WHO ARE YOU?_'

'I think it's…the house.' Remus says, as a clattering noise sounds from the kitchen.

'Uh-oh,' says Sirius suddenly, as a set of rusty knives zooms down the hallway towards them.

'_YES, PIDDLING MORTALS, IT IS I. THE ANCIENT AND MOST NOBLE HOUSE OF BLACK._ _IDENTIFY YOURSELVES, OR FACE MY EMINENT WRATH._'

The knives stop, quivering, just short of Remus and Sirius's noses.

'Should we just, answer, do you think?' Remus whispers, straining away from the knives. 'Will it _hear_ us?' Sirius snorts hysterically, and the House answers for him.

'_I HEAR EVERYTHING. STATE YOUR IDENTITIES._'

'Fuck!' Sirius yells, and starts struggling again.

'Shut up!' Remus shouts at him. The chains begin to constrict, and Remus gasps at the pain in his bruised arms. Sirius stops struggling and whimpers. It would be amusing if they weren't being attacked by an angry house with kitchen knives at its disposal.

'_TIME IS TICKING…_'

'HOUSE!' Remus cries over the ever-rumblier rumbling, 'I am Remus Lupin, and this man is Sirius Black.'

The rumbling quiets. The House seems to frown thoughtfully around them, or maybe it's just the panic building in Remus's throat. Houses don't frown. But neither do they talk, under ordinary circumstances. _Damn the Blacks and their damned Black house…_

'_OHO!_' the House exclaims crunchily, '_SIRIUS BLACK? HUSBAND TO HESPER BLACK, NEE GAMP? FATHER TO ARCTURUS, LYCORIS AND REGULUS?_'

'NO!' Sirius answers loudly, and, to Remus, 'he was my great-grandfather.'

'_HMMM…_' the House grumbles, with the air of one looking through records, '_SIRIUS BLACK, BROTHER OF PHINEAS NIGELLUS, ELLADORA AND ISLA?_'

'NO!' Sirius chuckles a little hysterically, 'my great-great-uncle, I think.'

'_AH! GOT YOU!_' The House of Black roars. Remus and Sirius cower. '_SIRIUS BLACK, SON OF ORION AND WALBURGA, BROTHER OF REGULUS!_'

Remus looks at Sirius, who sighs.

'That's you, I suppose?' He asks. Sirius nods grimly, dark eyes fixed on the knife between his nostrils.

'That's me.' He mumbles.

'_WHAT'S THAT? HAVE I GOT THE RIGHT SIRIUS? SPEAK UP, I'M A VERY ANCIENT HOUSE._'

'THAT'S ME.' Sirius barks. 'Now can you let us down?'

'_AHH…_' The House ponders. The knives relax slightly, but Remus isn't sure he's happy with that development. 'Relaxed' in this case might mean 'falling and landing in Remus's foot'.

'Merlin's sake, I'm a Black!' Sirius explodes, trying to wrestle his arm free.

'_PATIENCE, SIRIUS BLACK. THE HARDER YOU STRUGGLE, THE LONGER I WILL TAKE._' Sirius subsides into mutinous silence.

For now, Remus is keeping quiet. He is fairly certain that, as far as the Noble House of Black is concerned, he would fall into the category of 'filthy half-breeds', and the House has shown itself all too competent in the skill of pest-control.

After a notable pause, during which Remus and Sirius breathe noisily and wait, the House speaks. '_WELL, SIRIUS, MY RECORDS SHOW THAT YOU ARE THE PRESENT OWNER OF THE HOUSE OF BLACK, HAVING INHERITED IT UPON YOUR MOTHER WALBURGA'S DEMISE IN NINETEEN-EIGHTY-FIVE._ _IS THIS INFORMATION CORRECT?_'

'Yes.' Says Sirius, and then, 'oof.' Sirius falls to the floor as the chains binding him slacken and the doormat rolls free of his legs.

'_OF COURSE IT IS, I KEEP METICULOUS RECORDS._ _NOW, YOUR FRIEND._'

'Hello!' says Remus cheerily, as a droplet of sweat rolls down his temple. Sirius clambers painfully up.

'_HOLD STILL, AND ALLOW MY MINION TO EXAMINE YOU._'

'Wha- minion?' Remus says nervously, and then a large rat drops onto his shoulder. 'ARGH!' He yells.

'Shit!' Sirius exclaims, and reaches up to pull the rat away. It bites him.

'_DO NOT ATTACK MY SERVANT_,' the House orders, over Sirius's cursing, '_YOUR FRIEND SMELLS STRANGE TO ME. I WILL EXAMINE HIM THROUGH THE SENSES OF THIS RAT.'_

The rat begins to sniff Remus's face, hair and neck. Its whiskers tickle, and Remus stifles giggles. _How ridiculous_, he thinks. The rat leans on his cheekbone and reaches for his eye. He pulls away, nearly dislodging it.

'_BE STILL!_' Commands the House. The rat reaches up to Remus's eye again, with strangely agile little paws, and peers into his pupil. Remus sees that the rats own eyes are misted and luminous. _The House is possessing it_, he realizes.

Remus looks down, past the hovering knife, at Sirius's apprehensive face, and wants, desperately, nothing more than to kiss him. After several moments, the rat lets go of Remus, scampers down his arm and disappears into a murky corner.

'_WELL,_' thunders the House, _'A WEREWOLF. CORRECT_?'

'Y-yes.' Stammers Remus. _Bugger bugger bugger bugger…_

'_ARE YOU AWARE OF THIS HOUSE'S POLICY ON HALF-BREEDS_?'

'No.' _So help me God. _Sirius, below him, looks around in panic, and back up at Remus.

'_I DO NOT TOLERATE HALF-BREEDS TO WALK MY HALLS, BE THEY WEREWOLF, MERMAID, CENTAUR, OR ANY OTHER VARIATION ON MIXED-SPECIES. GOODBYE, REMUS LUPIN._'

'NO!' Remus and Sirius shout simultaneously. The House pauses.

'_WHAT IS YOUR ISSUE, MASTER SIRIUS_?'

'This is ridiculous!' Sirius yells, gesturing wildly. Remus allows his head to fall back against the throbbing front door. His life depends upon the reasoning skills of Sirius Black. _I'm dead meat._

'_RULES ARE RULES, MASTER SIRIUS,_' The House tuts, '_AS HEAD OF THE HOUSE, YOU SHOULD BE PROUD TO UPHOLD OUR VALUES. I WILL PROCEED WITH THE DOMESTIC CLEANSING._' The enchanted knives wriggle and draw back from Remus's face, rather like the sea draws back from a beach before a tsunami hits.

'Stop!' Sirius takes hold of Remus's hand, protectively, 'this is inhumane!'

'_MY POLICY IS NOT INHUMANE, IT IS HYGIENIC,' _booms the House,_ 'WHAT YOU SEE BEFORE YOU IS A VILE ABOMINATION. STEP AWAY FROM IT._'

'Well this is just- it's just- Christ!' says Sirius. Remus sighs at his ineloquence in this dire situation. 'Who made up this stupid rule in the first place!'

'_OH, YOUR…_' The House growls into ruminating hush for a second, '_YOUR GREAT-GREAT GRANDPARENTS, PHINEAS NIGELLUS AND URSULA. BEFORE THEY INHERITED, THE RULES WERE MERELY GUIDELINES AND BELIEFS. NOW I AM BOUND TO OVERSEE THEM. IT IS MY MERITORIOUS DUTY._'

'Oh, shut up!' Sirius snarls, pacing in front of the door. 'Wait!' He stands still, hands in the air, eyes wild.

'Sirius…' Remus hisses as the knives shudder an inch from his nose.

'Shush, Moony!' Sirius spins on the spot, 'House?'

'_YES, MASTER SIRIUS? PLEASE BE BRIEF, I HAVE AN EXTERMINATION TO CARRY OUT.'_

'If these rules were made by a previous Head of the Black family, does that mean that _I _can change them?' The House is quiet around them. Remus squints at Sirius. 'As the Head of the House of Black, I mean?' The House creaks for a long moment. Then-

'_IT WOULD BE…ACCEPTABLE,_' the House grumbles reluctantly, '_I AM BOUND TO YOUR WILL. DO YOU WISH TO MAKE AN AMMENDMANT TO THE RULES SET DOWN BY YOUR MOST NOBLE FOREFATHERS?_'

'Yes! I do,' Sirius is grinning viciously now, presumably with pleasure at the thought of usurping the authority of his accursed ancestors, 'that rule, the one about half-breeds, is hereby cancelled. Any species, and everything in-between, is allowed in the house. You will not attack my good friend Mr Lupin again. Is that clear, House?'

The House rumbles and shakes, with some House-emotion that Remus cannot fathom and does not want to, ever.

'_IT IS UNDERSTOOD AND NOTED, MASTER SIRIUS._' The chains around Remus's arms loosen and coil back, and he drops to the floor, rubbing his arms as his circulation comes back painfully sharp. He hears a whizzing noise as the knives return to the kitchen. Then he looks up at Sirius, who is watching him with concern in his dark eyes, thumbing his lip.

'I'm sorry.' Sirius says. Remus takes his hand in the suddenly silent hallway.

'What for?' He says, smiling quietly, and Sirius pulls him into a bear hug.

'I don't know,' Sirius mumbles into Remus's neck, 'for owning the house that just tried to kill you, I suppose.' He strokes Remus's upper arm, where Remus can feel that bruises are already blossoming, and presses his lips to his ear.

'Oh, be quiet, Sirius.' Remus huffs, and kisses him, yanks him closer and harder, until he feels they might melt together, like two chocolates in the sun. Sirius's thumb is caught between their mouths. When Sirius pulls it away, it scratches the razor cut on Remus's chin. But Remus doesn't care.

There is still shaving foam on Remus's face, adding a slippery texture to their kiss. But Remus doesn't care.

There are still, Remus realizes hazily, there are still dead mice all around them, killed by the House's strange, 'disinfectant' mist. But Remus doesn't care.

Where Sirius touches, Remus hurts. But Remus doesn't care.


	4. Early September 1994 pt 1

**Early September 1994. A waxing moon and broken glass.**

'Sirius,' says Tonks, 'I need to talk to you.'

Well, no good ever came of that statement.

His cousin (second, once removed, or something like that) was as animated as ever yesterday, her nose morphing, snout to trunk to enormous to tiny and bewhiskered as she fulfilled the role she has grown up with, the role of the entertainer over dinner.

It's cool to have Tonks around. She's twenty-two now, clumsy as a young elephant but bright as a May moon and twice as pretty, Sirius thinks.

She doesn't _know, _about Sirius and Remus, of course.

For him, she's the little sister he never had. For Remus, he guesses, she's some good company other than Sirius, and a buffer between them when things are still a little strange. Or perhaps when Remus is wondering what he's doing in this bloody horrible house with this bloody horrible man.

But now that the Remus is elsewhere and Sirius is peaceful, finishing off his large breakfast, sprawling in his kitchen chair, her face is small-featured and pinched beneath her usual spiky purple hairdo.

So Sirius is unusually gentle with his frown.

'What's up, Dora?' He flicks his wand and an ancient ottoman zooms out of a dark corner. He taps it with a bare toe, one leg thrown carelessly wide over the arm of his chair, tipped back on two legs. It creaks in protest. 'Oh, shut up.'

'First sign of madness, talking to inanimate furniture,' Dora attempts a laugh as she sits.

'_Nothing_ in this bloody house is inanimate,' Sirius grumbles, 'my dear departed parents liked _everything_ to move and talk.'

Dora giggles. Then her shoulders hunch over and her wrists look suddenly very thin. She gazes up at the cracked ceiling, eyes wide and shiny. She looks, Sirius thinks, like Remus at fourteen, before his idiot friends worked out the werewolf thing, alone in the great horror of his childhood, afraid of everything, not only the moon.

But this can't be anything as serious as that.

'What's wrong?' Sirius's eyebrows draw down suddenly, 'If that Dawlish idiot has been messing you about again,'

'Sirius that was _ages_ ago,' She sighs, and then frowns at him, which is at least better than pinched and white, 'and I _think _you'll find it was me who messed _him_ about. I don't get messed about.'

'You are a cruel beast,' Sirius relaxes slightly, toying with his wand, eyes half-closed in belly-full morning contentment, 'so what's all this about, eh?'

He doesn't really have time for this, what with all the carelessly attractive sprawling and snoozing to be done, but he figures, he has been absent from everybody's lives for twelve years, and he _likes _Tonks. Head screwed on right, that girl. Good taste in fashion.

'It's Remus.' Says Tonks, and Sirius looks at her suddenly, afraid, his figurative, or perhaps not so figurative, hackles up. Come to think of it, he has not seen Remus since last night, when he put him to bed after their very strange drunken conversation. Most uncharacteristic, for Moony to be drunk. Sirius put it down to PFMS, and then, it being so unsettling, put it to the back of his mind.

Sirius controls his expression.

'What about Remus?'

Tonks looks down.

'Is he alright? Are you alright? What's happened?'

She doesn't answer any of these questions. Instead, a tear rolls from the crease by her mouth and drops to the floor.

'It…just happened,' she says, her voice up an octave and cracking like the ceiling above, 'he was so drunk, he'd got out of bed to throw up and we just, it just.'

Sirius stands up. It's involuntary. He can't think suddenly, his mind is gone.

'I was just trying to comfort him, he fell in the bath and then w-we were kissing, and now, I don't know what to do,'

Sirius feels like a dog, when things are simple, hungry and instinctive. He wishes he could change, now, and just run away, where there are no Remus's embracing Tonks's in his head and where his stomach isn't slowly burning up, melting, nausea, acid, vom vomit ohmygod.

He flees.

* * *

><p>Tonks looks up to see Sirius's shirt-tail disappear through the doorway.<p>

'Fuck!' She claps a hand to her mouth, drops it almost immediately; there is no Mrs. Black to grab her by the hair and smack the backs of her knees anymore.

Sirius has gone, most likely to find bloody Remus and murder him. She pouts like a teenager. _Not a fucking child. _She'll kiss men if she wants. She does want. Almost all she wants is to go find Remus and kiss him again. But she'd prefer he was alive. Priorities, priorities.

She'd also prefer he didn't taste of vomit this time. _Shut up Tonks._

'Fucking fuck!' She leaps to her feet, starts, hesitates, punches herself, swears creatively and slams the door as she leaves.

Some large pieces of plaster rain from the ceiling, but no-one is there to see.

* * *

><p>It happened last night, and this is how it began. Well, to find how it <em>all<em> began, you'd have to go back to Remus's childhood, to the night where he decided to pet a strange animal, and find that place in him where there used to be nothing much, and watch as it filled with the moon and blood and terrible pain, things that have never left him since the night he was bitten. But this is how _this_ began.

Remus storms into the kitchen and trips over Kreacher.

'Nasty half-breed, there it stands, bold as brass,' snarls the ancient elf.

Full to the brim with werewolf hormones, Remus actually snarls back, a proper throat-ripping snarl. He catches himself, and purses his lips at the elf in an apologetic, albeit slightly insane way.

Kreacher gives Remus a look of deep disgust and shakes his sagging head.

'Mad as a Doxy on heat, filthy werewolves, poor Kreacher, what would my mistress say…?'

'Oh, sod off.' Remus's voice is a low growl, he can't help it. His skin prickles with imminent fur. His shaking hand slams onto the sideboard and a half-empty glass smashes on the floor.

Kreacher retreats to a safe distance.

Remus peers maniacally through a crack in the curtain. The moon stares insolently through every window in the house. Even through the curtains, he can feel it. Luminous translucent light, invading the peaceful darkness, dragging him through the weeks preceding full moon night.

In some ways, he just wants it over with. Three days of this, that's all, three days…

_But then, _a snide little voice inside him pipes up, _you'll feel even more like shit, because you'll have spent a night trying to tear down the cellar out of spite, and trying to to tear up your best friend just because he's good enough to be there._

'Shut UP!' Says Remus loudly to the kitchen and Kreacher, who still lurks in the corner muttering. _And _then_, _the voice continues_, you'll feel like shit for a week, and then you might feel alright for a while, but, _and now the voice is issuing from behind the curtains, from the waxing moon itself, _but I'm always here, invisible perhaps, smaller and weaker, yes, but _then _you'll feel it again, and then here we are…_

'SHUT UP!'

_Back where we started, yes, with me getting stronger and you feeling like shiiiiiit…_

* * *

><p>Sirius pounds down the stairs, ignoring for once the shrill screams of his mother's portrait as the enchanted curtains fly back. Remus is yelling in the kitchen and he doesn't know why. Remus is crying and not in a good way.<p>

He bursts into the kitchen and trips over that _bloody house-elf_.

'Oh there he is, accursed brat, what he's doing back in my mistress's house, disowned, he was, accursed, he is…' chunters Kreacher, picking himself up off the floor and rubbing his (hopefully bruised) backside.

Remus is standing by the window, his face pressed to a crack in the curtain, no longer shouting, but stiff and white. Sirius goes to him and touches the small of his back. Remus doesn't move. There is glass and some liquid on the floor, under Sirius's bare feet, but he doesn't care. His eyes narrow at the moon, he hates it for this harassment, disruption of the peace, for torturing Moony this way.

Sirius wishes he could knock the moon out of the sky and bring it to justice for its crimes against innocent children, for what Remus was before it got inside him.

'Oh, poor Kreacher, alone with his mistress for so many years…' Mrs Black is still screaming from down the hall, and combined with Kreacher's croaking monotone this is too much. Sirius lifts Kreacher, still muttering, by the neck of his pillowcase toga and drops him outside the kitchen door, slamming it.

'Moony.'

Remus doesn't even blink. Sirius has seen him like this before. Only a good sharp shock will wake Remus up.

'MOONY!' And he slaps Remus around the face. It's not even a very hard slap, but a quarter of a second passes and Sirius is flat on his back on the kitchen table, Remus's hands tight around his throat, Remus's face above him, full of the wolfs fanged and snarling, animal fury. The hands compress.

Sirius's shock prevent him from forming words. By the time he gets round that, Remus's hands have replaced the shock.

'Moo…ny…' Sirius croaks, unable to breathe, eyes locked on Remus above him, '_Moo…ny…'_

Something breaks in Remus's feral gaze.

Then the hands are gone and Sirius is staring at the ceiling, breathing, gasping breaths, already feeling the bruises start to form around his neck. He's afraid of the wolf and what it can do, afraid of Moony, who has collapsed on the floor against a cupboard.

He can't sit up for a while. As soon as he can, he does, pushing up on scraped elbows, feeling the glass in his feet, wheezing heavily. He feels like a bomb has just gone off in this room, leaving both of them thrown down, ears ringing with what Remus has done, covered in glass and bruises in strange, deep places.

Like the heart.

* * *

><p>Remus's hands are in the glass. His blood is leaking through the shards, mixing with the their amber contents. His self-loathing is such that it erases all else, his pain, still the moon above, and Sirius, whom he has hurt, lying on the table.<p>

He presses his hands against the floor, glass pushing deeper into flesh.

Sirius is moving. He sits. Remus brings his eyes slowly up to meet Sirius's, and catches them, wide with pain or shock or anger or betrayal or all of these at once. Remus drops his eyes swiftly. He is an animal. Sirius ought not to touch him.

Sirius's bloody feet drop to the floor in front of Remus. He crouches, trying to meet Remus's gaze. He reaches out, slowly, gently, to lift Remus's chin. Remus shuts his eyes.

'Moony…'

'Don't. I'm sorry.'

Sirius kisses him softly, tasting of forgiveness.

'I'm sorry…' Remus mumbles against him.

'It's not your fault, idiot.'

'Don't say that. Of course it's my fault.'

'It's my fault for hitting you.'

'It's my fault for strangling _you._'

'I hit you first,' Remus looks up at him in pained exasperation, 'oh, hello, that's better.'

'Sirius,' and Remus kisses him once, hard, 'I nearly _killed you._ Stop trying to make it ok.'

'It is ok.'

Remus _huff_s, and lets his head fall against the wood behind him. It hurts. A lot of things hurt.

'It'll be ok when we're both not full of glass and your neck stops its internal bleeding. About that, I am _so sorry_.'

'Well, we might be alright for a day, but it's full moon on Wednesday.'

Remus squeezes his eyes shut. 'But I guess you already know that.'

'I _know,_' whispers Remus, tangling a hand in Sirius's shirt, 'even without the calendar I _know_ when it's coming, _all the time_.'

Sirius only smoothes the hair off his forehead and kisses it, lips cool against the feverish skin.

'Come on,' he says, cheerier, if a little croaky, 'We'll have a bath and I'll find some tweezers for the glass.'

Remus shakes his head.

'Don't want to move yet.'

Sirius sighs, pecks Remus's nose, heaves himself up.

'Back in a little while, ok?'

Remus nods. Sirius limps away through the door. Remus sighs and cradles his bleeding hands in his lap. After a minute there's the sound of gushing hot water.

A shaft of moonlight, slipping through the crack in the curtains, falls on Remus's foot. He pulls it away, breathing suddenly too fast.

His skin still itches.


	5. Early September 1994 pt 2

**Early September 1994 ctd. A bottle of whisky, and a bathtub kiss.**

The next night, Remus sidles into the sitting room. Tonks is washing her hair in the bathroom off the kitchen, singing along to the radio.

Sirius turns to watch as Moony slams a half-empty bottle of whisky onto the sideboard. He takes slow steps to where his friend lounges, feet resting, bare as usual, on an antique coffee table.

'Padfoot,' he slurs, falling onto the worn cushions. 'Padtootle, Padsy-wadsy, mm.'

He leans in close to Sirius, draping an arm around his shoulders, breathing pungently in Sirius's ear.

'Evening Moony,' Sirius says, tight lipped.

Remus is very drunk. The smell of it surrounds him, a fug. He is too close to Sirius, close in a way that is not remotely sexual, perhaps because the smell of Remus this evening is reminiscent of Mundungus Fletcher, and makes Sirius's stomach churn, not in a good way.

Sirius tilts his head in, pecks Remus's lips once, and leans away. Perhaps this will be enough.

It seems not.

'Siriush, I'm very drunk.'

'Yes, I see that.'

'It's really shtupid of me I mean I haven't not for aaaages and never this...anyhow.'

'Moony dear, I'm over here. No, ouch, the other way.'

'What I'm try to meaning, Sirius, Siriush, where has your face gone?'

'STOP, stop that, here I am, look, woooo? ALRIGHT don't hurt yourself.'

'I'm shorry.' And he does look sorry, bloodshot eyes and wild hair, trying desperately, Sirius assumes, to find Sirius's face amidst the highly-coloured rotating walls.

'It's OK.' Sirius pats Moony on the top of his head, an odd, condescending gesture that quickly turns into a bad idea as Moony, thrown off balance, sinks into Sirius's lap and then sideways onto the floor. 'Jesus!'

'What on Earth're you doing up there, you plebian?' Remus calls, and gropes for Sirius's trouser hem, yanks it with pathetic strength. Sirius lets himself fall, more to indulge his oddly intoxicated mate than because he wants to be close to him.

'Oof! Tha's better.'

'Mmhm.'

'Sirius are you lis'ning to me? It's of the utmost…it's vital that you do.'

'I am listening. I think, however, that I had better put you to bed.'

'NO, I haves something to say, and damn it I will get it out,' Remus puts his arm over Sirius, snuggling closer on the floor. Sirius is becoming concerned about Moony's close proximity to the fire. 'What I mean is, you and me, I know we have a lot in the past, Sirius. And I feel that, a lot.' Remus presses his hand to Sirius's heart. 'In, in _here_, y'know? Like some things we never say to eachother, even considering all the, y'know, and all that, and stuff.' Remus smiles suggestively at something over in the corner. 'And in the end, Sirius, babe, no not babe, in the end, _Sirius_, I really like you.'

'I like you too, Moony. However drunk you may be. Please, now, allow me to put you to bed.'

'No, no, I'm not done shpeaking. In the end, I really like you, Sirius. You could say that I have grown very fond of you, although that would be insane, it's true I have.'

'As I have grown fond of you. Is that all?'

Remus shoves his hand almost all the way into Sirius's mouth. Sirius decides not to protest, but bears his torment patiently.

'Sirius, I have grown fond of you, but that is not all. What I mean to say is, that, despite you being really obtuse and stuff, I really, in the end, I really, I do really sort of l-l-loo…lub… snnnrrgk.'

Sirius lies there quietly for a while. Now that Remus is passed out, not breathing alcohol fumes into Sirius's face, he is content to watch him sleep, one gold-brown eye half-open and unfocussed, hands still, hair all over. He sucks thoughtfully on Moony's fingers, strokes the line of his strong cheekbone in the amber firelight, and listens to the soft drama of his breath.

After some time, Sirius gets up, finds a quilt and drapes it over where he lies. He tucks it in under Moony's feet and all around his body. He finds a jumper, rolls it up and slides it under Moony's heavy head. He kisses him softly by the ear, picks up his book, and continues to read.

Tonks is still singing. She's clattering around with pans in the kitchen, possibly mixing some variation on cocoa. The old house creaks above them, something skittering inside the ceiling, the many wild whispers of the upstairs. Tonight, it's strangely comforting, and Sirius falls asleep with his book on his chest, one hand stretched out to where Remus is.

Sirius is asleep, but the night is yet young for sorrow and drunken mistakes.

* * *

><p>When Remus wakes, it's sometime around three 'o clock in the morning, and the whisky in his stomach has decided it's time to leave the way it came in.<p>

He stands, not without some effort, and stumbles past the chaise-longue where Sirius snores. He is halfway to the door when his foot encounters an unexpected obstacle.

'OUCH!'

'Shit!'

Sirius snorts in his sleep.

The obstacle is Tonks's head.

'Remus? What the fuck?'

'Sorry, no time,' heaves Remus, and runs for the bathroom, banging off walls.

He is still very drunk, but now, rather than a welcome escape from the near-full-moon torture, it's very horrible, and involves the taste of stomach acid, and shivering sweat, and catching his hip on a corner of the table before he finally throws himself down by the toilet and retches what feels like four million times.

The wall is pleasantly cold against Remus's face. There is a huge spider inches from him. He really, really does not care. He wouldn't care if it crawled into his mouth. Not that it would want to. Remus feels physically quite as bad as he does every morning after full moon. _Well, this was a stupid idea._ Says a voice inside his head. _You'll be doing it all over again tonight._

Someone flushes the toilet by his head. Touches his forehead, pats his cheek. Holds the rim of a glass to his lip.

'Come on. Drink this.'

'Sirius?' Remus tries to look up, but the overhead light blinds him. 'Aagh..' The person laughs softly. He takes the water, gulps it down, rinses and spits into the toilet bowl. Tonks slides down beside him, in a vest and shorts. Her hair is very purple.

'Your hair is very purple,' Remus says, simply because he is drunk and that happens to be what crosses his mind as he looks at her.

Tonks's hair turns a soft pink.

'You kicked me in the head,' She says, tapping a red place at her temple.

'I'm sorry.' Remus seems to be saying that word rather a lot at the moment.

'You're forgiven. I understand.'

'Mmm,' her hair is pinker and pinker by the second, 'no you don't.'

Tonks looks down. Remus blacks out for a moment. Or perhaps an hour, it's impossible to tell. When he comes to again, his head is in Tonks's lap. He can only see her chin, because her head is tilted back over the edge of the bathtub.

'Pinker and pinker by the second,' Remus mumbles, 'I should go to bed.'

'Good idea.'

He moves, sits up, head over his knees, reality swimming around him.

Then several strange things happen.

Tonks half-stands and reaches down to pull him up by one scarred wrist. The unexpected movement throws Remus off balance. He topples sideways, jerking his wrist from Tonks's hand to break his fall into the bath. Tonks trips over his flailing leg and falls on top of him. Their cheeks meet. Their lips meet.

Remus is unaware of anything in the world other than the fact that Tonks's hair has turned a bright, burning red. Her vest is very much too thin above him. She's surprisingly light, pressed against him in the bathtub. He kisses her, not knowing why. They kiss and Remus realizes, unfocussedly, he is unused to breasts getting in the way, to curves and sweet, melting female noises and such disturbingly soft skin…

_Sirius_.

Then Remus has rolled over her, lightning fast, and rolled away, up on his knees, and Tonks crawls backwards in the limited space, and they look at eachother. Remus feels suddenly, unhappily sober.

_Sirius_.

'Tonks, I'm sorry.' He says. He feels feverish.

'What for?' Hair still red, but no longer burning. She reaches out to touch his cheek and he pulls back.

'I can't, I can't do this.'

'It's easy. Why?'

'I'm drunk,'

'I don't care.' It's a whisper from the rosy lips.

'It's wrong,'

'It is not. We're both adults.'

'It's not that…'

'What is it then? Is it me?'

'No, no, it's not you.'

'Then _why_?'

Remus is trapped in the bath. He's not even drunk anymore. He has done something and Sirius will know and life is the worst place to be right now.

'I'm sorry, Tonks. I shouldn't have kissed you. I have to go.'

'Don't, don't go…' A tear slides down her face, under her chin, down her neck to her disarranged vest. Remus can't bear it. He should wipe the tear away, put her to rights, give her a hug, and tell her everything.

_Sirius_.

Swallowing, Remus climbs out of the bathtub and leaves her sat there.


	6. Early September 1994 pt 3

**Early September 1994 ctd. Old hurts, loose ends, and a fight.**

Tonks cries, more from anger than rejection. She arches her back and lets the tears come, furious with herself for fucking things up, for falling in the damned bath, for not leaving stupid Remus to vomit alone. Furious with Remus for the way he made her feel.

She lets herself cry for a few minutes. Then she steps from the bathtub, and looks in the mirror over the sink. She wipes the tears away and licks them from her fingers. She sorts her vest. Combs her hair down. Closes her eyes and concentrates. Opens her eyes.

Her hair is still bright red.

Tonks grits her teeth, and calms her fury. _Butterflies, waterfalls, happy happy reindeer…_She peers through one eye. Her hair is violet again. _Phew_.

She sighs, and goes back to bed. Remus is nowhere to be seen.

_Good._

* * *

><p>Remus Lupin, Infidel Extraordinaire, is watching the sun rise over the Dover cliffs.<p>

He has always loved Apparition, the ability to instantly _be_ somewhere. It makes all the distant places he dreams of seem a little closer.

Here, for instance, miles away from London and Sirius, sleeping peacefully, and Tonks, crying in the bathtub. The waves crash mightily against the rock face, hundreds of feet below. The sun rises magnificently over the sparkling ocean, just for Remus. The moon, so very nearly a perfect orb, fades and sinks forgotten below the horizon behind him.

Remus doesn't know what he is going to do. He is such a very bad liar.

Perhaps Tonks will tell Sirius, and Sirius will kill Remus immediately when he walks through the door, and save him the awful confession.

_You coward_, says the moon inside him. For once, Remus doesn't tell it to shut up. The moon has hit the nail on the head.

'I am a coward, a repulsive, lily-livered slimy organism that deserves to die.'

That is what he will say to Sirius. Perhaps Sirius will be distracted by his adjectives and forget all about…it.

No. Sirius has never in his life been distracted by adjectives, except when it comes to food.

'Look, a pumpkin pie!' That could work.

Remus sighs.

There is nothing for it. He will have to confess and take his beating like a man. _I have wronged and I must pay_. He has hurt Sirius, he has kissed a girl while Sirius was asleep. He has never done that before.

Yes, Remus will go back. He will confess and apologise and kiss those beautiful feet and pray for mercy on Sirius's part.

But first, Remus will watch this beautiful sunrise.

* * *

><p>Sirius wakes to the sunlight blasting through gaps in the heavy curtains. He rolls off the couch, strides to the window and flings the curtains wide, breathing deep the birdsong through the gap between the panes. He longs to leave, to run through the streets to some pretty meadow and just roll himself up in a filo parcel of grass and insects and freedom.<p>

In her camp bed by the door, Tonks is snoring softly, a sweet little _wheet-fooo, wheet-fooo _noise. Remus's quilt is empty by the cold fire. Sirius is unconcerned, he's probably in the bathroom trying the scrub the whisky from his brain, or gone for a walk in the countryside to clear his head.

To substitute freedom, Sirius cooks himself a hearty breakfast.

As he slides the last morsel of bacon from his fork with his teeth, swinging his kitchen chair back on two legs, Tonks walks through the door.

'Sirius,' says Tonks, 'I need to talk to you.'

And then the rest.

* * *

><p>Remus stands in the doorway, hands helplessly dangling. He knows how he looks, worry-creased and uncertain, unshaven, and with very guilty lips.<p>

Sirius leans against the fireplace, arms crossed, face white. His eyes burn into Remus, right through him, Remus feels, into his very soul.

Remus takes a half-step forward into the room. Sirius makes a small, jerking movement with his head, accompanied by a small, angry sound. Remus takes back his foot, and moves no further.

'Sirius,'

'No.'

* * *

><p>Remus looks down and mumbles something unintelligible.<p>

Sirius continues to stare. No-one moves for several minutes.

'Sirius, I-'

'No.'

Remus presses his Tonks-kissing lips together and twists his Tonks-touching hands. Sirius wants to shout at him, punch him, kiss him and stop him doing that, because he has no right to feel sorry for himself.

'Please, Sirius-'

'SHUT UP.' Sirius shouts suddenly. He feels his pulse in his forehead and the breath coming hard through his nose.

* * *

><p>More minutes pass, excruciatingly.<p>

'You have,' Remus says quietly, pausing to ensure it is safe to speak, 'you have to let me talk sometime.' Sirius scowls silently. 'Because, Padfoot, I have to go to the cellar tonight, and I wish you would come.'

'Oh, really-'

'Yes.' A bone cracks in Remus's back. This happens constantly on full-moon day, when all his body is shifting, preparing to spring into furred monstrosity. 'And, Sirius, I'm s-'

'DON'T,' bellows Sirius, 'DON'T say SORRY like that will _fix everything_.'

'It's _all I can do_.' Remus is tired, his head hurts, and he is sorry. He is sorry more than anything else. He wonders where Tonks is. Then he stops, because he shouldn't be wondering anything about Tonks.

'_All you can do._' Sneers Sirius with a curling lip, reminding Remus shockingly of Severus Snape, cold, narrowed eyes and black hair in need of a trim.

'Can_ you_ think of something else I could do?'

'You could have not _caused this_, in the first place!'

'I'm _sorry_.'

'_Fuck's _sake, Remus!' And now there are tears, because Sirius looks up at the ceiling to stop them spilling out.

'I know.'

'You do not.'

'Yes I do, Sirius.' Remus is irritated, despite his overwhelming guilt.

'_Yeah_?' Sirius looks at him suddenly with a frightening expression on his face, fury mixed with sarcasm and streaked with tears. 'You know how this feels, do you? When did I _ever_ fucking do this to _you_? When have _you _ever been _cheated on_?'

'You did…in Sixth Year.' Remus hisses, because it's true.

'In Sixth Year _we_ weren't,' Sirius starts and stops.

'Weren't _what_?' Bites out Remus. 'Weren't _having sex_?'

Sirius looks down.

'No,' he says, quieter, 'we weren't doing that.'

'But we were doing _things_!' Remus trembles and itches, 'Believe it or not, I had _feelings_ at sixteen, don't act like you're the only person here who feels, alright?'

* * *

><p>'Don't act like you're the only person here who feels, alright?' Remus spits.<p>

'I wasn't sure like you were, it was,' Sirius looks to the side, dowsed in memories of teenage shame, 'it was fucking, _fucking_ weird, Moony, and I couldn't handle it, dreams and- so I just,'

'You just.'

'Because I didn't _know_ what I was _doing_, who I _was_, what it _meant_, and, Jesus!' Sirius is yelping with remembrance of his senseless younger self.

Moony says nothing, leaning beautifully, heartbreakingly in the doorway.

'I didn't realize, how much I,' and now Sirius looks up with tears breaking Moony into shards, 'how much I really,'

* * *

><p>'How much I really-'<p>

'_Sirius_,' Remus snaps across, 'I said _sorry_. That's, all I can do. _You_ might have forgotten what happened, I bloody well haven't, alright?'

'Moony-'

'_Because_ in the end,' Remus slams his hand against the doorframe, 'It was your _cousin_ when I was _drunk_, and that's not _nearly-_'

'Moony, don't just-'

'That's not nearly as bad as what you did to me in Sixth!'

'What the fuck?' Sirius looks mad.

'It isn't nearly as _fucking_ bad! Ok?'

'What the buggering cunt, Remus! Of course it's as fucking-'

'NO,' Remus yells, 'It's NOT as bad, not NEARLY as bad, and you know it, so shut your stupid mouth, Sirius, and we'll call it an eye for a FUCKING EYE!'

'Moony,' says Sirius, quiet, desperate.

Remus stops shouting and glares, uncomprehending.

'Moony, I don't know what you-'

'SHUT UP!' Remus strides over and grabs Sirius by the shoulders, shakes him with werewolf strength, 'You have NEVER KNOWN what it is like to be me, so SHUT YOUR STUPID, PUREBLOOD, _FUCKING_ MOUTH!'

Remus breathes hard in Sirius's stupid, _stupid_ face. How any person can be so stupid he does not know, all that matters is past hurts that are suddenly real again. All the dusty old emotions and confusion and humiliation and mixed upedness of those early days, the things they never really thrashed out, what Remus locked away, all of it bubbles up to the surface of Remus's mind-soup and is remembered as glaringly painful as though it happened yesterday.

All that matters is the darkness building again in Sirius's eyes and the hatred hardening his jawline as they blaze silently at eachother across the inch-gap that feels suddenly like an ocean.

'Fuck you, Lupin.' Sirius spits out, and shoves, his chest hard under Remus's hands.

Remus staggers backwards onto the chaise-longue as Sirius strides past him out of the dusty sitting-room. Out in the hall he hears the front door crash shut, and the _snick_ of Mrs Black's curtains and the ensuing screams.

'BLOOD-TRAITORS, DAMNABLE FILTH, CORRUPTING THE ANCIENT HOUSE OF MY NOBLE FATHERS! IMPURITY AND EXCREBLE HALF-BREEDS…'

'Bugger.' Says Remus, inaudibly amidst the screeching of Mrs Black. 'BUGGER!'

But Remus knows, from years of watching James and Sirius attempt it, that shouting never solves the problem.


	7. Late September 1994

**(Hi. Wow. If you've read this far and you're still with me, I want to say thank you so much. To clarify, if you wonder why a big chunk of writing is in italic in this chapter, it's probably a memory of Sirius's. I've tried to make that immediately clear, but I guess some of you might not have had a coffee this morning :) I hope you enjoy the chapter!) **

* * *

><p><strong>Late September 1994. It's not alright, but it will be.<strong>

The hired tawny owl launches off from Sirius's shoulder and disappears into the cloudy distance. When Sirius unfolds the letter it brought him, he slices a paper cut into his finger. He sucks in a tiny breath and licks the bead of blood away, but nothing could cut him more deeply than the words on the page that he then reads, in Remus's neat and slanted hand.

_**Dear Sirius,**_

_**Who is Sirius?**_

_**Who is Sirius? What is he**_

_**That all the Blacks condemn him?**_

_**Mercurial, handsome, and vitreous is he**_

_**Gehenna, such qualities did lend him**_

_**That he might elusive be.**_

_**Is he kind as he is fair?**_

_**For beauty lives with darkness**_

_**Love doth to his eyes impair**_

_**The pleasure of every conquest**_

_**And, being Love, spawns coldness there.**_

_**Then to Sirius let us weep**_

_**That Sirius is harsh and deep**_

_**He excels the cruellest keep**_

_**In Azkaban's walls, so cold and steep**_

_**To him, let us drink ourselves to sleep.**_

_**From Remus.**_

Sirius barely sees the words. Remus's voice fills his head, with those words on his tongue, except they're different. They're Shakespeare's words, _who is Silvia, what is she_? They are straight and sweet and pretty.

These words are twisted and beautiful and so painfully accurate.

He can picture Remus, _a thin sixteen-year-old, light hair pushed ruefully back as he stands, to raucous applause from his drunken dorm-mates. His school tie is knotted around his forehead, half the buttons of his shirt undone. Because today is Sirius's birthday, and tonight is Sirius's birthday party, and they're all intoxicated with the pleasure of laughter and with eachother's bleary faces, not to mention the vast quantities of firewhisky shots and marijuana that they have all consumed._

_So Remus stands, because he is pushed, and because this is his birthday present to Sirius._

'_Go 'n, Moony, read the damn thing!' James calls, his elbow casually resting on the shoulder of Peter Pettigrew beside him._

'_We're all waitiiing, Lupin!' and still Remus stands, shuffling and smiling foolishly, and Sirius wonders if he's waiting for them all to shut up, or for his embarrassment to fade and his body to catch up to the situation that he is in. Waiting, as he always seems to be, to stop being Remus Lupin._

'_Shut up, mates,' Sirius, 'he's got one shot at this or it's the plank for him, give the bloke a chance.'_

'_Arr, it's the plank for him, eh boys?'_

'_I said shut it!' Sirius gives Frank a dangerously unfocussed look, 'It's _my _birthday. Go _on_, Moony.'_

'_Alright,' Remus clears his throat awkwardly, lovely reluctant smile still on his face, 'this is a poem by Shakespeare-'_

'_Oh, fuck me, not Shakespeare-' _

'_A poem by Shakespeare that I have adapted, in honour of our own Sirius Black, who is sixteen today.' Remus continues, flushed and slightly breathless. With this, he accidentally signals another round of applause, which Sirius silences, rather forcefully. _

_Extending across Remus's fine-boned chest, under his half-open shirt, a thick scar stretches, so ridged that it casts a shadow, testament to some past violence._

_Sirius leans forward. Birthdays only come once a year. Last year, Moony was extremely skint, and got him a card. This year, Moony has no money at all. So his present is spoken, rather than a physical thing. Although he did give Sirius a Birthday Hug earlier on, when Sirius was slightly less drunk and was still hugging people without trying to rape them._

_Remus swallows, Adam's apple moving under his skin._

'_Who is Sirius?_

_Who is Sirius, what is he_

_That fair McGonagall commends him…'_

Sirius tosses a pebble violently towards the ocean, stretching wide and grey before him. It falls short, clattering back into uniformity with the thousands of other pebbles on the small cove beach where Sirius sits.

Remus is at Grimmauld Place right now. He's sitting at the kitchen table, in Sirius's chair, or he's in the sitting room. He's reading one of his many poetry books or he's doodling with a finger in the dust that still lies thick on the mantelpiece. He's reliving the fight they shared, not their first by far, but their first in years, and he's remembering what they both said and did, and he's thinking about it. What he's thinking, Sirius can't say, not without Remus's expressive presence nearby for him to read as easily as he breathes.

Sirius screws Moony's letter up in one hand. There is an ache inside him as though Moony has got his intestines and pulled them gradually out, a metre with every touch he shared with Tonks, every kiss, every gasp that Sirius knows all too well, that forms an image in his mind before he can stifle it.

That image has him pushing a hand through his hair, twisting it around his fingers and yanking, as though more pain means, somehow, less.

Sirius knows that he has done nothing that deserves this massive a retribution.

_You always hurt the ones you love._

Because he was stupid back then, really _fucking_ stupid, didn't know up from down or love from lust, couldn't face his emotions because they meant he was different, couldn't accept what his body told him because it felt so right, which in itself had felt so wrong. So, in his Sixth Year, swamped by fear and self-loathing and confusion and pride, Sirius made a mistake.

And Remus stood helplessly in the doorway as things crashed down around Sirius, as he always does, as they always do.

_Remus is hovering in the doorway, his head craning over the crowd of victorious Gryffindors. His lightly scarred face is hopeful, expectant, the tips of his ears pink in the charged atmosphere of the common room. In his hands are two Butterbeers._

_Sirius knows who Moony is looking for. He turns his back to the doorway before Remus catches sight of him, and finds himself chest to chest with Marlene McKinnon. She smiles up at him, some of her pink lipstick on her teeth._

_'Butterbeer?' She asks coyly. Sirius looks back over his shoulder at Remus, still hovering hopefully, and remembers the taste of his lips last night. He feels his cheeks redden, and shakes the memory away hurriedly, as though it could be seen by those around him. Marlene waits for an answer, and Sirius turns back to her,_

_'Sure,' he winks at her, removing one Butterbeer from her hand, 'let's sit over here…'_

_He leads Marlene, a hand at the small of her back, to a corner far away from the door. It's not long before they're talking like old friends, and not long after that Marlene pulls a flask from the pocket of her jeans and spikes both their drinks generously, and not long after that Sirius glances back to the other side of the common room to see that Remus has disappeared, and turns back to find Marlene's lips an inch from his before she kisses him._

_She tastes like alcohol and bubblegum and Sirius understands, for the first time, why lipstick is called lipstick, because it's sticky. Sirius remembers Remus's kiss, which was hot and dry and tasted of jammy toast and Sirius's smoke, and seemed to spread from his mouth to every part of his body and frightened him in a very strange and wonderful way. Too wonderful. With Remus it is always too wonderful. And strange._

_Marlene kisses him, and takes his hand and pulls him through the noisy crowd, past James, who gives him a grin and a thumbs up, and into the stairwell that leads to the boys dormitories. There is a hot swirling in Sirius's stomach, and whatever Marlene added to his drink has shot to his head like a Bludger to the brain. He realizes that he is totally sloshed when he tries to climb the first step and misses. Marlene, evidently holding her drink better than Sirius, hauls him up by the elbow._

_After that, Sirius knows that they make it to the dormitory, and probably to a bed, and he is aware of Marlene kissing him again, and then the world morphs into a series of red dots in the blackness behind his eyes, and the feeling of bouncing on a trampoline without actually moving._

_When Sirius wakes, sunlight is blazing through the arched windows, and he is alone in his bed with a filthy headache, and last night has been wiped cleanly from his memory as though it never was. He is naked, but he always sleeps that way in the summer, which hardly ever matters in a dormitory with four other boys, because Sirius is always the last out of bed._

_Sirius checks his wizarding watch, and finds that it is Saturday, and that it's 10 o'clock in the morning. After a late breakfast of coffee, and coffee, and more coffee, Sirius has perked up considerably, and makes his way back to the common room to find James._

_'Alright, mate?' James grins at him over his Daily Prophet, hair carefully mussed. Sirius yawns at him, and turfs a second-year out of a nearby armchair, flopping into it and pulling out his smoke tin. 'Fun with Marlene last night?'_

_'Who?' Sirius is busy rolling. James looks disbelievingly at him._

_'Marlene? McKinnon?' Sirius gives him a blank look, 'you shagged her, last night?'_

_Sirius feels his eyes go suddenly wide. He forgets his cigarette._

_'I…didn't,' James raises his eyebrows and purses his lips, 'did I?'_

_'You are shitting me? Do you honestly not remember?'_

_Sirius scours his mind for the events of last night._

_'I don't remember anything after falling up the stairs.'_

_'HA!' James guffaws, throwing his head back._

_'Shit…' Sirius feels very strange. He wonders if that's because he lost his virginity last night, or because he doesn't know if he did. James doesn't stop laughing, tears sparkling in his wicked brown eyes. 'This isn't _funny_, James!'_

_'What's not funny?' Remus has just climbed through the portrait hole. With wry eyes, he takes in James's tears of mirth and Sirius's comically shocked expression. Their gazes meet for a moment, and Sirius looks quickly away, fingers resuming work on his cigarette._

_James presses his lips together and subsides, shaking with occasional chuckles._

_'Our Sirius doesn't remember getting with Marlene last night, that's what.' James shakes his head at his best friend, disbelief and fondness in the set of his quirked lips._

_It happened in that moment. And Sirius caught the hunching of Moony's shoulders, saw the pain in Moony's eyes, poorly concealed by his smile, and Sirius knew what he'd done, and Sirius did nothing._

_'Just shut up about it, James.' He stares determinedly at the floor._

_'Pads! You should be proud!' James makes a face that Sirius doesn't see, 'this is the most important experience in a young girl's life. And you don't even remember it…'_

_Sirius gets up, cigarette between his lips, and goes to the little window, thrusting it open. He sparks a match, flaring orange, looking carefully at Remus from beneath a lowered eyelid._

_Remus stands there, eyes fixed on something far away, steady hands balled up at his sides, and says, tonelessly,_

_'Well, good on you, Sirius. I've got to, um, see you later.' And he turns and climbs stiffly out of the portrait hole._

_And Sirius does nothing._

_And it isn't until the evening that Sirius sees Marlene, hurries up to her,_

_'Marlene!' he puts his hand on her shoulder without thinking. She turns, shrugging him off, a warning expression on her face. Then she smiles embarrassedly when she sees who it is._

_'Hi, Sirius. What's up?'_

_'Marlene, about last night-'_

_'Oh, last night,' She bites her lip, 'it's ok, Sirius.'_

_'Yes, and- what?' Sirius frowns at her._

_'It's ok, really,' Marlene pats his arm gently, 'If I'm honest, I think I'd have regretted it anyway. No offence to you. You're a great guy.'_

_'What?' Sirius has never been this confused in two days. He doesn't like it at all. 'Sorry, I'm lost,' he says to her, 'my memory's gone. Did we, you know, last night?'_

_'Oh!' She opens her eyes and mouth wide, 'you can't remember?'_

_Sirius shakes his head._

_'Anything?'_

_'No.' He says frustratedly. _Moony has twice her class_, he thinks._

_'Ahh.' Marlene giggles softly, looking away from his face. He catches her gaze, a violently quizzical expression on his face._

_'So? What did we do?'_

_'We kissed.' Marlene smiles coyly. Sirius groans inwardly. He hates girls and their games and their meaningless little expressions._

_'What…else?'_

_'Well.' Marlene looks at him frankly for the first time, 'there, things became a little…'_

_She can't seem to find the word._

_'Please be straight with me,' Sirius says through his teeth. Marlene takes a breath, looks at the ceiling. Then looks at him._

_'There, things failed. I would advise you to never drink alcohol again, you obviously have no stomach for it.' Sirius raises an eyebrow. 'Things… you, failed. Epically.' Sirius raises his other eyebrow. 'You couldn't, Sirius. Couldn't undo a simple zip, couldn't find your own bed, couldn't, well. Couldn't get it up, ok?'_

_Sirius's mouth drops open. 'That's right. You couldn't get it up, and things went no further. I put you to bed, quite a bloody ordeal, if I might add. Then I went back to the party, had a rather nice time with Toby Fletchley actually, and _he_ said-'_

_'Thanks, Marlene,' Sirius cuts across, 'that's really, er, straightened things out for me.'_

_Marlene laughs. At Sirius, not with him._

_'I bloody well hope it has,' She giggles, and as she walks away Sirius hears her chuckle to herself, 'straightened things out… I bloody well hope it has…'_

_He stands looking at her retreating figure for a moment, then shakes his head to clear his thoughts, still in shock._

_'That's that, then.' He confirms to himself, and walks slowly to dinner, not understanding the relief he feels._

* * *

><p>Nothing makes sense.<p>

Everything makes sense.

As Remus clears his dinner things from the table, robotically rinsing his plate under the guttering flow, he thinks of Sirius.

He thinks of Sirius, and the anger in his face and the last words he spoke to Remus before he left. He thinks of Sirius's dark eyes and how they burned him.

Remus has not stopped thinking about Sirius since he left.

Every day feels wrong, every moment inside Number 12 a false one without Sirius's presence. Because they complete eachother. Because that's the thing, with Sirius and Remus, that Remus is only just beginning to understand, and it sounds like a Muggle romance film, but.

But that's what holds them together and has always done so, even when Sirius retreats behind his shifting moods, even when Remus finds it impossible to penetrate Sirius's over-bright shell, they still move around eachother like the moon and the Earth.

Remus isn't Remus without Sirius. And Sirius isn't Sirius without Remus isn't Remus without Sirius.

And that's what will bring Sirius home.

* * *

><p>As Sirius shut the door behind him a moment ago, as quietly as it is possible to shut a huge, ancient, rattling door, he looked behind him from the corner of his eye as Remus eased into the doorway of the sitting room.<p>

Sirius stands on the doormat, not sure if it's ok for him to move any further.

'Werewolf senses.' Sirius blinks away from Remus's strong tawny gaze. 'I suppose you heard me coming a mile off.'

'No,' Remus answers, 'I heard when you Apparated onto the doorstep.'

'Yes.' Sirius says quietly.

'May I ask why you were attempting such stealth?' Remus shifts his weight from one foot to the other, arms folded against his chest. Sirius notices, by Remus's rolled-up shirtsleeve on his forearm, a scar, fresh, raw and dark pink, thrown into contrast by the gaslight against his skin.

'I…thought you'd be asleep,' Sirius pulls his attention from the wound, 'It's almost three, you know.'

'I knew you'd come back.' Remus whispers.

'I'm…'

'Don't. I know. So am I.'

'We should talk about…things.' Sirius says, helplessly, half-heartedly.

'Yes.' Remus agrees. 'What would you like to talk about?'

Sirius is lost. Remus's warm frame calls to him, his narrow shoulders against the doorframe, the curve of his neck where Sirius's nose ought to be, and his angular jaw and the shadow of his cheekbone in the light.

'You _know_,' Sirius says. He feels Remus's cold eyes pressing down like a glacier on his shoulders.

Remus lets out a long breath. His eyes leave Sirius's face.

'Ask me a question.'

'What?'

'I don't know,' Remus says, lips tight against the words, 'how to talk to you about this. You must want to know some things. Ask me a question.'

'Alright,' Sirius swallows, 'Tonks.'

'Yes.'

'You and Tonks.'

'Yes.'

'You slept with Tonks.'

'Ye- what?'

'What?'

'I didn't,' Remus stares at him, a slight frown on his face, 'I didn't sleep with Tonks.'

'You…' Sirius feels his eyebrows twitch, their gazes locked, each swimming in the confused eyes of the other.

'I didn't sleep with her. Did you think I did?'

Sirius looks down, chin to chest, and back up at Remus.

'By 'sleep with', you mean…'

Remus coughs out a little bemused breath.

'Sirius,' he compresses his lips for a moment, 'I didn't… I have never had sexual intercourse with Tonks.'

'Well, what…' Shaking his head, the hair out of his eyes, Sirius wrinkles his brow, 'what did you do?'

'I kissed her. No,' Remus scratches his arm, 'she kissed me. We kissed.'

'And that's it?'

'Yes.' Remus stares up at Sirius, brown eyes wide and honest.

'But then,' Sirius wonders, 'what's all this been about?'

'I'm not sure.' And neither is Sirius.

They think in silence for a moment.

* * *

><p>Remus shuffles a little, watching Sirius, because the painful knot inside is still not quite untangled. Sirius stands there, black strands of his rough hair over his forehead, a shadow around his chin where he hasn't shaved. His busy hands are held carefully at his sides, as though Remus is a strange animal to be approached with caution.<p>

He looks at Remus in that way too, with flickering hesitance in the dark depths of his eyes. Remus could cross those few steps and wipe that look off Sirius's face in seconds, with his fist or his lips, but he holds himself still.

'In Sixth Year,' he cuts the silence, voice like a knife.

'Oh,' Sirius remembers, 'Yes. I got drunk.'

'Marlene.'

'Yes.'

'You and Marlene.'

'Yes.'

'You slept with Marlene.'

'Ye- what?'

'Oh,' Remus says softly.

* * *

><p>'No.' Sirius tells him, for the first time, 'I didn't do that.'<p>

'You didn't…' Remus whispers.

'I didn't.' Sirius exhales at the ceiling.

'I didn't,' Remus is looking down, a smile tugging sweetly at the corners of his mouth.

'You didn't,' Sirius confirms breathlessly.

There is another silence. Sirius absorbs Moony until he looks up, an expression on his face that Sirius can't recognise in the absolute relief of this moment. Somewhere inside Sirius, a piece of him clunks back into place, a piece that he didn't realize was missing, from a space he didn't notice was empty, until now.

'Say something.' Moony is still standing in the doorway. He shouldn't be, Sirius thinks, now that things are clearing up rather than crashing down.

'That poem you sent me,' Sirius starts.

'I didn't mean it. I'm sorry.' And Moony's eyes shimmer suddenly.

'I forgive you,' Sirius's own eyes are shockingly, suddenly, tear-blurred. 'But it was really…'

'Awful, I know. But it's the best adaptation I've ever done.'

Sirius's words tumble out like pebbles, just as blunt.

'It's not alright,' he says, 'is it.'

But Sirius sees Moony melt then, his tense limbs relax, folded arms drop. His eyelids flutter, mouth twisting as the first tear falls, and Sirius has bridged the distance between them in two strides, and is held tight in Moony's scarred arms before he realizes he has moved.

'No,' Moony gasps into his shoulder, 'it's not alright.'

But it will be.

* * *

><p><strong>(Phew! Hope you liked it. Not my favourite chapter so far, but I think that's because it's the least romantic. More coming soon, I promise, I'm on study leave at the moment so I have nothing to do but write write write (should probably do some schoolwork huh :P). Anyways, thank you wonderful people for taking the time to read, and if you haven't reviewed my story already, please, please take a few seconds to tell me what you think! Love from Emit)<strong>


	8. Early December 1994

**(Here it is. We get a little more of the outside world coming into this chapter. When Sirius left in Chapter 6, he was away for about a month, and during that time he was in the cave near Hogsmeade where Harry visits him in the Goblet of Fire. He's back now, of course, thank God, and Remus is feeling the love :) enjoy the chapter!)**

* * *

><p><strong>Early December 1994. Siriusology, a ring at the doorbell, and a spy. Love eventuates. Several times.<strong>

Remus studies Sirius Black as an iconologist studies Da Vinci.

He's a Siriusologist, transfixed by the acuteness of the scythe-edge of Sirius's jawline, the sweeping skin-scape of his neck and the hard dunes of his collarbones, the dipping shadow-pool between them, in the penumbra and twilight of Sirius's bedroom.

Sirius is a deep sleeper. Like his dog alter-form, he has the ability to drop into a coma-esque slumber anywhere, at any point in the day. Remus remembers when he once fell asleep _during _a Quidditch match. It was a slow summer day in Fourth Year, and Ravenclaw had had the Quaffle for twenty minutes straight, and Remus looked up from the stands to see a Bludger hurtling towards Sirius's motionless form in the sky.

Remus remembers the days with Sirius in the hospital wing, the heavy bandages around his skull, graffitied by James. He lays a flat palm on Sirius's chest now, feeling his heartbeat, half for reassurance and half in wonder at its simple constancy.

The skin over Sirius's stomach stretches hot and dry, porous, paper thin, and Remus bumps a finger gently over the visibly white ribs and around to the small inky hollow of his navel, following the snail-trail of dusky hairs down his abdomen.

Sirius starts awake at the touch of Remus's fingers on him. Remus smiles at the dreams Sirius is blinking away.

''Morning, cabbage.' He yawns, stretching.

'More like afternoon.' Remus chuckles, tracing random patterns in the clearness by Sirius's jutting hip. 'Cabbage?'

'It's a commonly-used endearment in France,' Sirius sniffs, lazily scratching his chest, 'a country of culture and class that you, of course, would know nothing about.'

'Half-breed plebeian that I am,' Remus murmurs, catching the hand and pressing the tips of their fingers together, like the ribbed ceiling of a cathedral of flesh.

'Mm,' Sirius's eyes are closing again, his boneless relaxation warm against Remus, his hand drops to Remus's chest, absently thumbing his nipple. Remus inhales slowly through his teeth, abruptly turned on. 'Afternoon, is it?'

After all these years Sirius can still do this to him, can still get him going with a flick of his finger or just one lazy grin, and not seem to notice as Remus holds himself quiet, stifling his moan, always trying to win the fight over who kisses who first. 'Afternoon wood, then?' Sirius breathes into the electrified quiet, 'Afternoon glory?'

Then Sirius looks up at him, dirty little smile tweaking the corners of his lips, three-day stubble begging to scratch Remus's chin.

So this time, Remus loses.

And right in the middle of it all, the doorbell rings.

'Damnit _all_,' Sirius snarls from somewhere in the musky darkness of the bed. The heavy velvet curtains are closed, and at some point earlier in the day Remus's shaking hand had knocked the lamp off the bedside table.

Only one person ever rings the doorbell. And he never seems to bring good news.

* * *

><p>'Good afternoon, Sirius,' Dumbledore smiles on the doorstep, eyes twinkling behind his spectacles, 'I apologise for getting you out of bed.'<p>

Sirius scrubs his hand in his tangled hair and smiles sheepishly back. Behind Dumbledore, the miasma of translucent protective magic hovers like a heat haze.

'No probs, Dumbledore,' he says, 'won't you come in?'

Dumbledore sweeps graciously past him, and Sirius shut the door on the world that hunts him, and follows his old Headmaster down the hall. The old man always inspires nervousness in Sirius, which is within reason when you think of the years of pranks and lawbreaking that took place in Dumbledore's school, with Sirius Black always at the centre of the chaos.

But there's more to it than that. Dumbledore means memories, too many memories of fidgeting beside James in front of his desk, waiting for justice to fall. Even now, as he sits across from Dumbledore at the kitchen table, Sirius knows this can be nothing pleasant. Because Dumbledore doesn't just pop round for a cup of tea and a catch-up.

'Er… tea?' Sirius offers anyway, knowing the old wizard's predilection for manners.

'Yes, please.' Dumbledore looks cheerfully around the gloomy kitchen, humming what sounds suspiciously like 'A Cauldron Full of Hot Strong Love'. Sirius starts the kettle.

'Remus'll be down in a minute.' He says, and Dumbledore nods genially.

Sirius waves his wand. Three mugs fly out of the cupboard and onto the counter, and with another flick, teabags rise from the jar by the kettle and drop into each mug.

Just as Sirius begins to wonder where he is, Remus walks in, evidently having combed his hair.

'Afternoon, Professor.' He greets Dumbledore, who stands up to shake his hand.

'Really, Remus,' Dumbledore chuckles, 'twenty years since you were a student, and you are still unable to address your old Headmaster with any less than formal term.'

'Old habits, Sir,' Remus smiles ruefully, pulling out a chair.

'Quite, quite,' Dumbledore beams, 'and are you both well? I understand the cellar of Number 12 suits your needs perfectly, Remus.'

'Yes, Sir, it does,' Remus answers, and Sirius turns to the kettle as it boils, wondering irritably when Dumbledore will get on with it. He has no idea of the wonderful situation that he interrupted when he rang the doorbell. Then again, maybe he does. It might explain all the twinkling that Remus calls 'knowledgeable' and Sirius calls 'suggestive'.

Sirius pauses with the milk in his impatient hands.

'Sorry, Dumbledore, I can't remember.'

'Milk and two sugars, thankyou Sirius.' Dumbledore looks at him benevolently, in the way that Sirius supposes God might survey His creation.

When the tea is on the table and Sirius is sat down, and Dumbledore's thirst for pleasantries has apparently been sated, Remus asks him,

'Is this merely a friendly visit, Professor? Do you need me for something?'

Sirius drums his fingers on the table sourly, jiggling his foot. He notices the 'me' that Moony uses, and hates it. Moony lays his hand soothingly on Sirius's leg under the table.

Dumbledore surveys Remus sadly over his spectacles.

'Yes, Remus, I'm sorry. The time has come to talk of grave matters.'

'Skip the theatrics, Dumbledore,' Sirius says irritably. Remus gives him A Look.

'Please be patient with me, Sirius,' Dumbledore says gently, 'this will be difficult enough for all of us. Indulge an old man his 'theatrics'.

Sirius quiets, feeling Moony tense beside him, as Dumbledore begins to speak.

'As you are aware, Voldemort's most loyal Death Eaters are on the move once again. We believe they may have already located their master.' Neither Remus nor Sirius flinches at the hated name.

''We' being…?'

'Ah, yes. I have begun the arduous process of reinstating the old Order.'

Sirius blinks. Moony gasps softly.

'The Order of the Phoenix?' Sirius feels a grin spreading over his face, 'We're going to fight him?'

'That is partly the reason for my visit,' Dumbledore smiles gravely, 'to ask you both to rejoin.'

'Excellent!' Sirius grins broadly, tipping his chair back on two legs in satisfaction.

'Of course.' Remus says. Sirius looks at him. His face is not joyful, but full of a burning determination. This close to full moon, his eyes are more gold than brown.

'Thankyou.' Dumbledore says softly. 'Now, although Voldemort's present condition is not clear to me, it is certain that he has a physical form, however weak. My guess is, astutely, I think, that his servant's first priority will be to restore him to full power.'

'The servant,' Remus whispers.

'Wormtail.' Dumbledore confirms, a trace of cold fury in his soft voice.

Sirius hisses through his teeth. Anger bubbles up inside him like the hot slow rise of a potion when you add the last ingredient. Moony is clenching Sirius's hand under the table with the wolf's strength, and Sirius feels his knucklebones grind, anathema to the howling dog inside him.

_Peter Pettigrew. Traitor. Murderer._

'Harry's in danger,' Sirius growls, 'should I go north again?' He feels the blood in his ears, jittering, the need for immediate action.

'No,' Dumbledore says firmly, 'you disobeyed my order not to leave the last time Harry was in danger. If I am honest with you, Sirius, there is nothing you can do for the boy by hiding in a cave near Hogsmeade.'

'We have to fight it!' Sirius exclaims, 'I can keep my eyes open, watch what goes on up there…'

'Not nearly as well as I can,' Dumbledore sips his tea, 'you are aware that Harry has been chosen as Hogwarts Champion in the Triwizard Tournament?'

Sirius nods sharply.

'Someone put Harry's name in that Goblet. That person is not his friend. That person would see him harmed, and that person is within Hogwarts this very moment. I have placed certain protective spells around Harry already, but the first task approaches rapidly, and I have enough to concentrate on without moving a Fidelius Charm. You will stay, Sirius.'

Sirius leans back in his chair. He reaches for his tea, but stops when the cup rattles against the saucer.

'What can I do?' Remus says, a hardness in his voice that Sirius has not heard for years.

'I need you to infiltrate those of your… kin, who still live in the shadows.' Dumbledore says tactfully, but Remus interrupts him.

'Please,' he says in a strangled voice, 'don't call them that. You know what they are, Dumbledore, and they are not my kin.'

Dumbledore pauses, and inclines his head.

'As you wish, Remus.' He looks down at his wrinkled hands around his mug, 'I need you to go to the werewolves, join them, and live their life. I need you to be a spy. This is not a demand. I ask it of you, and you may give your answer freely.' Here Dumbledore looks up at Remus with those piercing blue eyes, 'But you know, as well as I, that you are the only one who can accomplish this task. Will you do it?'

_No._

Remus is staring at the table. Sirius stands up, his chair shrieking against the tiles, and clears his empty mug from the table, not wanting either of them to see the shaking in his hands, the desperation in his eyes and irregular breaths.

_Don't leave me, Moony._

He senses Dumbledore's ice-blue gaze on the back of his head, and tries futilely to shield his mind, knowing the old man to be an excellent Occlumens.

'Sirius,' Dumbledore says quietly, and Sirius knows it's too late to hide his thoughts. 'Sirius, you must understand why this is necessary.'

'Please,' Sirius turns, 'please don't send him.'

'Pads, I have to go.' Moony looks at him with love and regret, 'you said it yourself, we have to fight, and if I'm the only one who can-'

'_No._' Sirius hisses, gripping the edge of the counter, 'Remus, please.'

'You don't have to stay here alone,' Moony touches Sirius's white-knuckled hand, and looks at Dumbledore for back-up, 'you could go and stay with Tonks, with Mad-Eye-'

'I'm afraid,' Dumbledore says grievously, 'that the risk of Sirius's discovery would be too great if he hid anywhere else. The Fidelius Charm resides with myself, Remus, and you, Sirius, and the magic in place offers the greatest protection possible to this house, but if you were to move, more Secret Keepers would have to be made, and the further the Fidelius Charm is stretched, the less powerfully it can hide you. For the sake of the Order and many of your friends, I cannot allow you to leave until your name is cleared.'

Sirius understands. He loathes this fact, his maturity, and pushes it away, but he does understand, and he forgives, too.

'I just…' He begins, voice breaking, and slumps into his chair, 'I can't bear this place, alone. It's everything I…'

'I know,' Dumbledore reaches across the table and clasps Sirius's hand, 'this house represents all of your suffering and misery, and it is a cruel thing I ask of you. I promise to visit regularly, with updates, when Remus is away, and Remus will be here when I can spare him, which will, I believe, be quite often. He will join the wolves each full moon and for at least two weeks every month, but the story I have devised for him allows him the other two away from the clan.' Dumbledore shakes Sirius's hand between both of his, and Sirius looks up at him. 'You are not alone, Sirius.'

Remus slips his arm around Sirius's waist and presses his forehead to Sirius's temple. Eventually, Sirius sighs, and nods.

Dumbledore pats his hand, and stands.

'Thankyou for the tea, but I must be going.'

'Yes.' Remus gets up to see Dumbledore out. Sirius remains where he is.

'I will send you more details when I have them, Remus,' Dumbledore says, wrapping his silver travelling cloak around his shoulders. 'Your first mission will not be for a few weeks yet. I expect you will have Christmas with Sirius.'

And at the kitchen door Dumbledore turns back, 'Sirius?'

Sirius looks up at him, conveying his forgiveness for this theft of Remus through his eyes.

The old wizard gazes at Sirius with love and pride and compassion in his smile, and something else in his eyes that Sirius can't place.

'It's going to be alright.' Dumbledore says gently, 'you'll see.'

* * *

><p>Remus kisses Sirius as though the world will end tomorrow, tonight.<p>

'_I have but an hour of love, of worldly matter and direction to spend with thee.'_

Sirius pauses and pulls back, a slight smile visible under his façade of abject disbelief and irritation.

'Do you mind, Lupin? He says crossly, breath warm on Remus's face, 'some of us can appreciate the miracle of sex _without _your quoting Hamlet at every bloody turn.'

Remus slips a finger up the back of Sirius's slick neck, legs wrapped tight around his hips.

'_To be or not to be, that is the question_.' He sighs, and then meets Sirius's gaze, shaking his head. Their noses brush together. '_That's_ Hamlet, you Philistine. Did you learn _anything_ in Muggle Studies?'

'You know perfectly well that I had better things to do,' Sirius smiles fully, gazing away over Remus's head in happy remembrance, 'tipping ice cubes down your shirt. Making girls skirts fly up.'

'You still managed to get an 'Outstanding'.'

'Pure genius,' Sirius pushes his nose against Remus's, dark eyes bright, 'or maybe it was all the Muggle television I watched? Hmm… Nah,' their lips graze as he whispers, 'pure, unadulterated genius.' And he licks Remus's nose.

Remus attacks him.

Sirius makes deep, pleased noises in his chest as Remus growls, rips Sirius's arms away from his back and pins them above his head, running his sharp teeth along the skin above Sirius's collarbone. Giddily, Remus tries a move he once saw in a sex scene of a Muggle film.

It works.

After, when Sirius is panting against the headboard, his hands on Remus like his nails will have to be extracted, they move together, slower, immersed in the sensation of eachother's skin.

'_Shhh…shh…' _Remus breathes into the space above Sirius' ear.

He isn't sure why he does it. After months of this, years in fact, Remus is still uncertain of himself, feels like a teenager, all flaws and delicate hypersensitivity and elbows and knees that don't fit into the jigsaw that is sex.

But they manage. Spectacularly, in fact.

* * *

><p>'Sirius?<p>

'Yes, Moony.'

'You know I have to leave.' Remus's eyes are this incredible golden-brown that melts Sirius's insides. His chin is sharp on Sirius's chest as he talks.

'Yes, Moony.' Sirius sighs out, not about to let the imagined future spoil The Moment, which is fine enough as it is. _Who needs the future_?

'Pads?'

'Moooony,' Sirius hums.

'What will we do for Christmas?' Remus wonders, shifting his head to rest more comfortably against Sirius's chest. His wild hair tickles Sirius's chin, and his fingers slip, dreamlike, over the blue veins in his wrist, separate pulses fluttering abstractly.

Sirius breathes in the peace and the scent of Remus's hair.

'I don't know,' he rolls his eyes, knowing Remus will sense him do it, and feels Remus smile against him, 'play charades and get drunk on mulled wine, like everyone else, I suppose.'

'Mm,' Remus mms.

'Just, not _too _drunk, eh Moons,' Sirius grins, and grabs Moony suddenly and tickles him in the ribs, and is utterly unprepared for the consequences.

Which turn out to be not so bad, after all.

* * *

><p><strong>(Yayy! Sex and happiness! Lol, thanks for reading. The next chapter will be Christmas :) authors need encouragement, and a couple of words in a review to tell me what you thought are always welcome! My undying gratitude to everyone who has this on alert because they love it, IT LOVES YOU BACK. Love from Emit)<strong>


End file.
